Cleft and Other Odd Tales

Wilson is an absolute master of the weird tale, and a writer whose prose is a pleasure in itself. How can you resist an opening sentence like this one from "The Casino Mirago": "At the end of a very long chain of many things gone most astonishingly wrong I found myself booked out of season under an assumed name in the grandest suite of a Hotel Splendide located on the coast of Portugal."?

This collection features nearly four decades of the cartoonist's short fiction, culled from sources as diverse as Playboy magazine, the ground breaking Dangerous Visions anthology, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Omni magazine. As stated in the publicity materials, "Sometimes amusing, sometimes frightening, Wilson's short fiction is as eclectic as his cartooning." Like those cartoons, Wilson's stories are macabre, dark, and humorous, strange little forays into the weird and bizarre. My personal favorite was Wilson's tribute to Sax Rohmer and Fu Manchu, "The Power of the Mandarin," an engaging examination of the tension between authors and their creations.

What an unusual book! This is my first exposure to any of Mr. Wilson's work and I am completely charmed. The illustration at the start of each story provides a clue to it's ending. It became fun to study the picture and hope that I could guess what was to come. I was never able to do it! The stories are a complete and engaging mystery until the very end. I especially enjoyed the macabre view Mr. Wilson took of several characters from the literature of my childhood. "The Sea Was Wet as Wet Could Be" seems like the sort of fairy tale the would result from joint writing between Robert Louis Stevenson and Steven King. Odd and unexpected tales that were a genuine joy to read. I can't wait to explore the rest of Mr. Wilson's work.

I've always liked Gahan Wilson's cartoon collections... They're easily on par with those of the late Charles Adams. This collection of short stories is right on the mark. Sometimes jarring, sometimes thought-provoking, always entertaining. I strongly recommend "The Cleft and Other Odd Tales."

This book sent shivers down my spine and for days I was paralysed with terror. Hilariously disturbing - I absolutely loved the story about the blob. Gahan Wilson has a tremendous sense of the macabre, I laughed and laughed.